Ice breath blasted from the central head, a freezing torrent that coated the wall behind Bullet in thick, crackling ice. Shards exploded from the impact, jagged pieces spinning through the air. One caught his arm, another his cheek. The ground trembled, cracks spreading through the floor, the air growing so brittle it felt as though it might shatter.
Bullet clutched his pipe tightly and charged.
The central head lunged, jaws snapping, revealing icicle-like teeth as long as daggers. They grazed Bullet's shoulder, the already injured one, tearing deeper into the gash. Blood streamed down his arm, warm against cold, and the pain shot through his body with the rapidity of lightning.
He pivoted, his bad leg nearly buckling under him, and swung the pipe with everything he had. The steel connected with the beast's jaw with a jarring clang that sent shockwaves up his arm and through his cracked ribs. The impact was so hard he felt it in his teeth.
The Hound's blood, darker than it should be, almost blue, sprayed from its mouth and froze in mid-air, glinting like gems in the dim auroral light filtering through the cave entrance.
The beast recoiled, its crimson eyes flaring brighter, a snarl vibrating through the walls with such violence that shards of ice were loosened from the ceiling and started to rain down.
Next came the left head, surging forward with a speed impossible for something its size. Its breath of ice exploded out in a frigid wave that hit Bullet square in the chest. It burned like fire...that paradoxical pain of extreme cold. His wounded leg felt like its skin was already turning to ice. The flesh around the wound started to blacken; frostbite was setting in fast. Pain so hard his knee almost buckled. His movements turned slow as cold seized his muscles, making them stiff and nonresponsive.
He stumbled, the bloody feet slipping on the slick ice. The pipe swung wild, but he managed to redirect it to bring it down hard on the left head's snout. Ice shards exploded outward. One nicked his side, a sharp sting to add to all his other hurts. The beast's head jerked back, the frost-matted fur crackling with the movement, its growl a low, ominous rumble that Bullet felt in his bones.
The right head roared then, and the sound was catastrophic. The entire cave shook. Icicles fell from the ceiling like jagged spears, dozens of them, raining death. One grazed Bullet's arm, slicing a thin line that immediately welled with blood. Another pierced his calf, his already wounded calf, driving deep into the muscle. Pain lanced through his leg so intense his vision went white for a moment. He nearly dropped to his knees.
The Hound charged, its huge claws shattering the icy floor. Cracks spidered outward from each footfall. One set of claws raked across Bullet's ribs, tearing through his cloak like it was paper, cutting deep gashes through skin and muscle. He felt something crack...bone, probably. Blood pooled hot and slick against his side, steaming in the frigid air.
Bullet's breath caught. His vision blurred. His heart thudded hard, as if it would burst. But his scar. his scar burned. Hot and fierce and refusing to let him fall.
He rolled onto his side, the ice slick beneath him, his arm barely able to raise the pipe. The handle was slick with blood from his torn palm, his grip unsure.
That is when he saw the crystals.
The cave walls were lined with them, those same sentient crystals from outside, pulsing with static electricity. Their hum had been background noise, but now Bullet 'heard' it, felt it resonating with his scar's pulse.
The Hound dove again, all three heads converging, jaws wide. Bullet barely dodged, throwing himself to the side. His body screamed in protest. Every wound, every injury, every broken part of him demanding he stop. But he couldn't stop. Wouldn't stop.
He swung his pipe at the nearest cluster of crystals embedded in the wall. The metal connected with a sharp crack, and suddenly electricity surged through the cave like a living thing.
The current arced from crystal to crystal, creating a web of blue-white lightning that illuminated the whole space. The Ice Hound convulsed as the electricity hit it, three heads snapping back in unison, its dense fur crackling and smoking. Its crimson eyes flickered, dimming for just a moment as the beast staggered.
Bullet didn't waste the opening.
He charged forward, ignoring his screaming leg, his shattered ribs, his frozen skin. The pull blazed in his chest like a star going nova. Icicles continued to crash around him. One piercing his shoulder like a steel spike, driving deep into muscle. Cold blood gushed from the wound as he tried to yank it free, and a raw scream tore from his throat, echoing through the cave.
But he kept moving.
The heads started to close in once more, the streams of ice breath intertwined into a cold mist that blinded Bullet and turned his limbs numb. His leg, injured previously, was nearly useless, responding to his commands begrudgingly. His arm shook, muscles fighting the cold and the damage.
The central head snapped at him, jaws wide, teeth gleaming like knives. Bullet ducked, his leg buckled, sending him to one knee, and he swung the pipe upward with every ounce of strength he had left. The metal struck the beast's temple with a sickening crunch.
Bone splintered. The sound was wet and raw.
The central head slumped, its massive weight tilting sideways, crimson light fading from its eyes like a candle being snuffed out. The head hung limp, blood, that strange blue-black blood, pouring from the wound and steaming on the ice.
The left head screamed then. Not a roar, not a growl, a scream of rage and pain that set Bullet's ears ringing. Its claws raked at him instinctively, tearing deeper into his side. He felt his ribs crack audibly, bone splintering under the pressure. Blood gushed hot against the cold, and for a moment his vision went completely black.
But his scar burned. That constant, relentless pulse over his heart that had driven him through six provinces refused to let him die here.
Bullet roared back, a sound of defiance that came from somewhere primal, and swung the pipe at the left head's jaw. The metal connected with brutal force, shattering those icicle teeth like glass. They exploded into crystalline fragments that scattered across the ice, and the beast's strange blood froze in streaks across the cave floor.
The left head leaned back, bewildered, its movements sluggish now.
The right head lunged once more, but this time it was slower, due in part to the damage to its body. Its jaws snapped at Bullet's arm. The teeth barely grazed him, leaving shallow cuts that stung but didn't disable.
Bullet saw his chance.
He took a step forward, and his ruined leg almost gave out, but held together with will and that cursed pull...He drove the pipe directly into the right head's eye.
The metal sank deep with a wet squelch, pushing through the eye socket and into whatever brain or core kept this thing alive. The crimson glow winked out instantly.
The Ice Hound collapsed.
Its massive bulk hit the cave floor with a thunderous crash that shook the entire structure. Above, ice shards rained down in a final cascade of deadly fragments. One grazed Bullet's cheek, leaving a stinging cut. The beast's body shuddered once, twice, then went still.
Blood, so much blood, pooled beneath it, that strange blue-black color that steamed and froze simultaneously on the ice floor.
Bullet slumped beside the body.
His pipe fell from his numb fingers, the metal ringing against ice. His body was a map of agony...shoulder pierced by an icicle that was still embedded in the muscle, arm fractured from the force of his own swings, leg frozen and gashed, side torn open with ribs cracked or broken, calf with an icicle-wound so deep he could see bone.
Every breath was torture, and his chest felt so heavy, his ribs scraping together with each inspiration. His vision swam, darkness creeping in at its edges.
The hum in the cave slowly died away. The veins of the ice wall, pulsing moments before with that inner light, began to fade, like the tundra itself was mourning its guardian.
Through his failing vision, Bullet saw something beyond the Hound's corpse...a faint light, pulsing softly. A passage through the ice wall.
He had to move, had to keep going. The pull demanded it, burning through the pain, through exhaustion, through everything.
Bullet crawled.
The ice was slick with his blood, bright red against the blue-white surface, steaming in the cold. His ruined leg dragged behind him, useless. His fractured arm couldn't support his weight, and so he pulled himself forward with his good arm alone, fingers scrabbling for purchase on the smooth ice.
Every inch was agony.
Visions flashed through his mind as he crawled, fragmentary and chaotic...jeweled regimes crumbling under a blood-red sky, towers falling, people screaming. Villages burning, flames consuming everything, smoke choking the air. Screams echoing from Province 269's jungle, faces twisted in terror. A hand...shadowed, indistinct...clutching a glowing shard. His shard. The circle bisected by a jagged line, pulsing with light. And a name, whispered just beyond his hearing, always out of reach.
Were these his memories? Or someone else's, fragments that somehow bled into his mind?
The shard in his pocket grew warm, almost hot against his thigh. It pulsed in rhythm with the light of the passage, like two things recognizing each other.
His scar burned. Not with pain, but with purpose. With need. The pull was so strong now it felt like hooks in his chest, dragging him forward even as his body tried to shut down.
He thought of all the people he'd left behind. Patch's steady hands and kind eyes. Cowboy's quiet strength. Rivet's fierce determination. Shard's leadership. Spark's bright hope. Ember's fire. Glow's sacrifice in the jungle. Thorn's shattered dreams. Ridge's guilt-heavy resolve. Stitch's trust. Frosthawk's warning. Twig's fear.
All of them, connected to him for brief moments before he moved on. All of them, debts he'd never repay. Faces he'd never forget.
"I'm sorry." he whispered, barely audible to himself. "I'm sorry I couldn't stay. I'm sorry I couldn't save you."
The passage drew closer. Ten feet. Five feet.
His fingers touched the threshold, and heat washed through him. Not a shock, but something softer, like recognition. The etched shard flared warm in his pocket.
Bullet pulled himself across the threshold on his last ounce of strength.
The world changed.
That passageway opened on to Province 927, and the temperature swing so extreme that Bullet gasped. From the brutal cold of Province 713 straight to scorching heat—the air thick and acrid, choking, tasting of smoke and sulphur.
He fell onto black stone, obsidian maybe, smooth and warm beneath his bloody hands. Above him, towers rose. Jagged things of black metal and darker stone, reaching toward a smoke-choked sky. Fissures in the ground glowed red with what looked like lava or molten metal, casting everything in crimson light.
The streets were slick, not with ice but with some kind of oily residue that reflected the red glow in distorted patterns. The air smelled of burning metal, of furnaces, of industry gone wrong.
Province 927 was a city. An obsidian city, dead and burning at the same time.
Bullet levered himself upright using the pipe for a crutch. His arm hung limp at his side. It was probably broken. His leg could barely take his weight. Blood dripped from dozens of wounds to pool on the black stone. There was still an icicle stuck in his shoulder. Should melt soon.
This pull guided him forward, pointing deeper into the city. Always forward. Always demanding more.
The tundra faded behind him like a bad dream. The glow from the wall of ice dimming into the distance. He'd survived Province 713. Barely. At tremendous cost. But he'd survived.
With every step into the heat of Province 927, new dangers arose. It was as if the shadows here were alive, moving wrong, too fluid. The towers loomed like silent judges. And the fissures pulsed a red glow, like a heartbeat.
His scar pulsed back, answering. It wasn't over. It would never be over. Not until he reached whatever destination the pull was dragging him toward. Not until he ended "its torment", whatever that meant.
Bullet limped forward into the obsidian city, leaving behind him a trail of blood on the black stone, his silhouette a broken thing against the red glow.
Behind him, in Province 713, the Ice Hound's blood continued to steam on the cave floor, its three heads staring sightlessly at nothing.
---
The Seeker moved through the bioluminescent jungle of Province 269, the black cloak snagging on glowing vines, thorns dragging lines of blood across his arms that he ignored utterly. His face was cold, expressionless.
Alongside him, the Dreadwraith slithered through the underbrush, its form never quite solid...shifting from vine-like tendrils to mist to something with claws and too many joints. Its star-like eyes flared periodically, crimson and hungry, scanning the depths of the jungle.
The bone-tech whistle hung from the Seeker's belt, its surface warm with the energy of Province 1's cruel craft. It bound the Dreadwraith to his will, made it his hunting dog, his weapon.
Duty drove the Seeker, colder and more absolute than any physical chain. It was everything. He didn't question it. Couldn't question it.
A sentinel hovered nearby, its mechanical body glinting in the jungle glow, its red eyes recording everything. It was his link to the castle, to the robed man and the console, to the leader himself.
"Report." said the Seeker, his voice flat and emotionless.
The sentinel's eyes pulsed.
Somewhere in Province 1, the robed man heard every word, saw everything the sentinel saw.
"Still searching Province 269," the Seeker continued, cutting a vine with his blade.
Bioluminescent sap glowed on the metal, dripping onto the moss. "He was here...the dreamers remember him. He fought the Hive-Warden's visions and moved on." His jaw tightened, the first sign of any emotion.
"But which direction? Which province did he go to next?" The sentinel didn't answer. It couldn't. It merely recorded and transmitted.
The Seeker regarded the Dreadwraith, its restless form twitching to hunt. "Desert, water, rock, jungle...always forward. Always surviving."
He paused, peered into the glowing mist. "Who is he? Why is he here? How does he keep surviving?"
The mist of the jungle wove faces around him, lost climbers, dreamers caught up in the Hive-Warden's visions, their despair feeding the vines. But the Dreadwraith cast them back, its limbs cutting through the hallucinations, single-minded in its purpose: hunt, kill, end.
The Seeker readjusted his grip on his blade and went deeper into the jungle, following faint traces...broken vines, disturbed moss, the lingering sense of someone who'd passed through recently.
"We're getting closer," the Seeker said softly. Not to the sentinel, not to the Dreadwraith...to himself. "He's leaving a trail. Broken guardians. Survivors who remember him. He can't hide forever."
Somewhere ahead, beyond this jungle, his quarry moved through unknown provinces. But the Seeker was patient. Duty made him patient. It would eventually lead them to the same place. And when it did, the hunt was over.